Civil War and Reconstruction

Abraham Lincoln gave this speech in Springfield, Illinois, when he accepted the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. At the time, the nation was bitterly divided over whether slavery should spread into the western territories.

(1) "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

(2) Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

Abraham Lincoln gave this speech in Springfield, Illinois, when he accepted the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. At the time, the nation was bitterly divided over whether slavery should spread into the western territories.

(1) "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

(2) Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

On September 22, 1862, five days after the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln warned that enslaved people in any area still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free. On that date he signed the final proclamation excerpted below. It listed the states and parts of states then in rebellion. It did not apply to the four slave states that had stayed in the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) or to some areas already under Union control, such as Tennessee.

(1) … by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, …

(2) And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

(3) And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

(4) And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

(5) And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

Word help: to garrison a fort means to station soldiers in it; to man a vessel means to serve as its crew.

The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania (July 1–3, 1863) was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a national cemetery for Union soldiers killed there. The whole speech is printed below; it took about two minutes to deliver.

(1) Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

(2) Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

(3) But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Word help: "Fourscore and seven" = 87 (a score is 20). To consecrate or hallow means to make holy.

Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, publicly criticized President Lincoln for moving too slowly against slavery. Lincoln answered in a public letter dated August 22, 1862.

(1) My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union …

(2) I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

(3) Editor's note: One month later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It warned that enslaved people in areas still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free.

Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, publicly criticized President Lincoln for moving too slowly against slavery. Lincoln answered in a public letter dated August 22, 1862.

(1) My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union …

(2) I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

(3) Editor's note: One month later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It warned that enslaved people in areas still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free.

(1) When the Civil War began in 1861, the 23 states that stayed in the Union and the 11 states of the Confederacy had very different resources. The table and chart compare them using rounded figures from about 1860.

(2) The Confederacy did have some advantages. It mainly needed to defend its own territory, many of its officers were experienced, and its leaders hoped that Britain and France, which bought Southern cotton, would support it.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court had ruled that Black Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States. After the Civil War, three amendments changed the Constitution.

(1) Thirteenth Amendment (1865), Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(2) Fourteenth Amendment (1868), Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

(3) Fifteenth Amendment (1870), Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court had ruled that Black Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States. After the Civil War, three amendments changed the Constitution.

(1) Thirteenth Amendment (1865), Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(2) Fourteenth Amendment (1868), Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

(3) Fifteenth Amendment (1870), Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

On September 22, 1862, five days after the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln warned that enslaved people in any area still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free. On that date he signed the final proclamation excerpted below. It listed the states and parts of states then in rebellion. It did not apply to the four slave states that had stayed in the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) or to some areas already under Union control, such as Tennessee.

(1) … by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, …

(2) And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

(3) And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

(4) And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

(5) And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

Word help: to garrison a fort means to station soldiers in it; to man a vessel means to serve as its crew.

(1) In 1860, slavery was legal in 15 of the 33 states. After Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in November 1860, seven states of the Deep South seceded between December 1860 and February 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America.

(2) On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Three days later, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. Rather than send troops against other Southern states, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded between April and June 1861.

(3) Four slave states, known as the border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), stayed in the Union.

Figures are rounded from the 1860 U.S. Census. Virginia's figure includes the western counties that became the state of West Virginia in 1863.

(1) When the Civil War ended in April 1865, about four million people had been freed from slavery. A month earlier, Congress had created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually called the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau handed out food and medical care, helped freedpeople sign labor contracts, and worked with churches and Northern aid societies to open more than 1,000 schools.

(2) President Andrew Johnson, who took office after Lincoln's assassination, announced his own Reconstruction plan in May 1865. He pardoned most former Confederates who took an oath of loyalty, and he let Southern states rejoin the Union once they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Southern voters sent many former Confederate leaders to Congress; Georgia's legislature even chose Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy's former vice president, for the U.S. Senate. The new Southern legislatures also passed Black Codes, laws that limited the rights of freedpeople. Some codes required Black workers to sign yearlong labor contracts or face arrest.

(3) Many members of Congress, led by the Radical Republicans, were angered by these developments. Congress refused to seat the new Southern members. In 1866 it passed the Civil Rights Act over Johnson's veto and proposed the Fourteenth Amendment.

(4) In 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts. They divided ten former Confederate states into five military districts. Each state had to write a new constitution that let Black men vote and had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before it could rejoin the Union. In 1868 the House of Representatives impeached Johnson; the Senate fell one vote short of removing him from office.

(5) Under the new state governments, Black men voted and held office. In 1870, Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black U.S. senator. But most freedpeople never received land of their own. Many became sharecroppers, farming a landowner's fields in exchange for a share of the crop, and many fell deeply into debt.

Source 1 — South Carolina, "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union," adopted December 24, 1860

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, about six weeks after Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election. Four days later its convention adopted this explanation.

(1) … an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations …

(2) … they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. …

(3) A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Word help: eloign (an old legal word) means to carry away or remove.

Source 2 — Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

By the time Lincoln took office, seven states had seceded.

(4) … I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. …

(5) … I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. …

(6) In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

(7) I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. …

On September 22, 1862, five days after the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln warned that enslaved people in any area still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free. On that date he signed the final proclamation excerpted below. It listed the states and parts of states then in rebellion. It did not apply to the four slave states that had stayed in the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) or to some areas already under Union control, such as Tennessee.

(1) … by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, …

(2) And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

(3) And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

(4) And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

(5) And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

Word help: to garrison a fort means to station soldiers in it; to man a vessel means to serve as its crew.

(1) During Reconstruction (1865–1877), federal troops were stationed in parts of the South. Formerly enslaved men voted in large numbers, and more than 1,500 Black men held public office, including 16 who served in Congress. New state governments opened the South's first public school systems.

(2) Many white Southerners resisted these changes. In 1865 and 1866, Southern states passed Black Codes that limited where freedpeople could work and live. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan used violence and threats to keep Black citizens from voting. Most freedpeople never received land of their own; many became sharecroppers, farming someone else's land for a share of the crop and often falling deep into debt.

(3) The disputed presidential election of 1876 led to the Compromise of 1877. Democrats accepted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president, and the last federal troops were withdrawn from the South. Reconstruction was over.

(4) Over the next decades, Southern states passed laws that kept Black citizens from voting without ever mentioning race. Poll taxes charged a fee to vote. Literacy tests were often judged unfairly by white officials. Grandfather clauses excused a man from these rules if his grandfather had been able to vote before 1867 — which protected poor white voters but not the descendants of enslaved people. States also passed "Jim Crow" laws that segregated schools, trains, and other public places. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court allowed segregation under the rule that came to be called "separate but equal."

(1) The timeline lists major events from Lincoln's election to the end of Reconstruction. Events are in the order they happened, from top to bottom.

Source 1 — South Carolina, "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union," adopted December 24, 1860

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, about six weeks after Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election. Four days later its convention adopted this explanation.

(1) … an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations …

(2) … they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. …

(3) A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Word help: eloign (an old legal word) means to carry away or remove.

Source 2 — Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

By the time Lincoln took office, seven states had seceded.

(4) … I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. …

(5) … I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. …

(6) In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

(7) I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. …

(1) In 1860, slavery was legal in 15 of the 33 states. After Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in November 1860, seven states of the Deep South seceded between December 1860 and February 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America.

(2) On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Three days later, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. Rather than send troops against other Southern states, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded between April and June 1861.

(3) Four slave states, known as the border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), stayed in the Union.

Figures are rounded from the 1860 U.S. Census. Virginia's figure includes the western counties that became the state of West Virginia in 1863.

The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania (July 1–3, 1863) was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a national cemetery for Union soldiers killed there. The whole speech is printed below; it took about two minutes to deliver.

(1) Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

(2) Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

(3) But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Word help: "Fourscore and seven" = 87 (a score is 20). To consecrate or hallow means to make holy.

Two historians answer the question "Why did Reconstruction end?" Both historians are fictional, but the events they describe are real.

Historian A — Dr. Miriam Holt

(1) Reconstruction was overthrown by force. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and, later, the White League attacked Black voters and officeholders. In 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, a white mob killed dozens of Black men who were defending the county courthouse. In Mississippi in 1875, Democrats used threats and violence to keep Black citizens from the polls and took control of the state government.

(2) Federal laws such as the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 worked when they were enforced. In my view, the problem was that the federal government too often failed to enforce them. Reconstruction did not fade away; it was destroyed.

Historian B — Dr. Daniel Reyes

(3) Violence mattered, but Reconstruction ended mainly because Northerners lost interest. The Panic of 1873 began an economic depression that lasted several years, and many Northern voters cared more about jobs than about the South. In the 1874 elections, Democrats won control of the House of Representatives.

(4) The Supreme Court also narrowed federal power. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), a case that grew out of the Colfax killings, the Court ruled that the federal government could not use the Fourteenth Amendment to punish the private individuals charged in the case. By 1877, I believe, most Northerners were simply tired of "the Southern question." When the last federal troops left Southern statehouses that year, few objected.

Two historians answer the question "Why did Reconstruction end?" Both historians are fictional, but the events they describe are real.

Historian A — Dr. Miriam Holt

(1) Reconstruction was overthrown by force. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and, later, the White League attacked Black voters and officeholders. In 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, a white mob killed dozens of Black men who were defending the county courthouse. In Mississippi in 1875, Democrats used threats and violence to keep Black citizens from the polls and took control of the state government.

(2) Federal laws such as the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 worked when they were enforced. In my view, the problem was that the federal government too often failed to enforce them. Reconstruction did not fade away; it was destroyed.

Historian B — Dr. Daniel Reyes

(3) Violence mattered, but Reconstruction ended mainly because Northerners lost interest. The Panic of 1873 began an economic depression that lasted several years, and many Northern voters cared more about jobs than about the South. In the 1874 elections, Democrats won control of the House of Representatives.

(4) The Supreme Court also narrowed federal power. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), a case that grew out of the Colfax killings, the Court ruled that the federal government could not use the Fourteenth Amendment to punish the private individuals charged in the case. By 1877, I believe, most Northerners were simply tired of "the Southern question." When the last federal troops left Southern statehouses that year, few objected.

(1) In 1860, slavery was legal in 15 of the 33 states. After Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in November 1860, seven states of the Deep South seceded between December 1860 and February 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America.

(2) On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Three days later, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. Rather than send troops against other Southern states, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded between April and June 1861.

(3) Four slave states, known as the border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), stayed in the Union.

Figures are rounded from the 1860 U.S. Census. Virginia's figure includes the western counties that became the state of West Virginia in 1863.

Source 1 — Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

(1) With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Source 2 — Background: two plans for Reconstruction

(2) In December 1863, Lincoln proposed the Ten Percent Plan. A Confederate state could form a new government and rejoin the Union once 10 percent of its 1860 voters swore loyalty to the United States and accepted the end of slavery. Most Confederates would be pardoned.

(3) Radical Republicans in Congress thought this plan was far too easy. Their Wade-Davis Bill (1864) required a majority of a state's white men to swear loyalty, and it kept many former Confederates from taking part in forming the new state government. Lincoln blocked the bill with a pocket veto.

On September 22, 1862, five days after the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln warned that enslaved people in any area still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free. On that date he signed the final proclamation excerpted below. It listed the states and parts of states then in rebellion. It did not apply to the four slave states that had stayed in the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) or to some areas already under Union control, such as Tennessee.

(1) … by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, …

(2) And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

(3) And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

(4) And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

(5) And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

Word help: to garrison a fort means to station soldiers in it; to man a vessel means to serve as its crew.

(1) The timeline lists major events from Lincoln's election to the end of Reconstruction. Events are in the order they happened, from top to bottom.